A quote I want to focus on from The Origins of Totalitarianism is, “What the masses refuse to recognize is the fortuitousness that pervades reality. They are predisposed to all ideologies because they explain facts as mere examples of laws and eliminate coincidences by inventing an all-embracing omnipotence which is supposed to be at the root of every accident. Totalitarian propaganda thrives on this escape from reality into fiction, from coincidence into consistency.” (Arendt, 460)
I feel like this quote applies to a lot of areas in 1984, but I want to focus on a specific quote coming from the Book of Goldstein that Winston read. “A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party”. (Orwell, 211)
Everyone who lived under the Party’s control in 1984 cannot, or more importantly, is not allowed to think for themselves. The reality they are provided is one fabricated by the Party itself, despite it being fictitious. And a lot of it is really about fear mongering. Similarly to how the Nazis would use fear mongering as a way to distort reality. One way this fear mongering to create a reality centers around race. In 1984, there is the ongoing war between the Party and Eurasia. The Party constantly reaffirms the narrative of Eurasian citizens as devils and makes the distinction of them being the “other”. Like how earlier in the book, Winston describes a mongolian looking man being paraded around in a cage and people shouting at him, full of hatred. This can be a parallel to the development of anti-semitism in Nazi Germany during World War II. Arendt mentions how Nazis created false narratives about Jewish citizens residing in Germany. One interesting point that was made by Arendt is that Party leaders create these narratives not really for any economic benefit or benefit of the citizens, they do it merely because it benefits them by creating a shared ideology which in turn, makes it easier to control and remain in power.
Another demonstration of this distortion of reality is when O’Brien is interrogating Winston after he had been arrested by the thought police. Winston cannot fathom the fact that 2 plus 2 equals because it has been rewritten that 2 plus 2 equals 5. Same can be said for how Newspeak works in The Principles of Newspeak chapter. Combinations of words have their meanings skewed as a way of preventing any thought about what the meaning might actually mean. And a more extreme example would be when Julia and Winston discuss the recent bombings and how the Party says it was done by Eurasia, but who is to say that it wasn’t the Party themselves that launched those bombs on its own citizens. So to put it all together, those in power have the ability to skew reality in their favor, and the masses accept this fictitious reality making it reality.
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